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Can someone confirm Looker Laying Off US DCL

thomas_brittain
Userlevel 4

Can anyone at Looker confirm and comment on this thread?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Looker/comments/t5jpwk/google_cloud_just_laid_off_the_entirety_of/

If confirmed, I’m deeply concerned.  Our company has been a long time Looker user.  We have a monolithic implementation. One of the reasons we have stuck with Looker is their extremely passionate DCL: Iqbal, Ryan, Sasha, Olga, and many more.

That stated, we currently have ~15 unresolved Looker bugs.  The current staff working on them seem to have no idea what they are doing.  They keep stating, “I’m checking with a colleague” and asking, “Can I follow up with you in email?”  The emails never come.

Yesterday, I spent 4.5 hours on chat trying to get answer to unexpected permissions behavior! I’m an engineer, not Looker’s QA department. I’ve my own work to complete! 

Google, your product is only as good as your people--and if the plan is to start shopping for staff at the Dollar Store, then I’m advising our company to keep an eye open for other analytics platforms.

This topic has been closed for comments

17 replies

N

 

Chris_Tinnon
Userlevel 2

A colleague shared that same post as well. Troubling, if true.

 

N

Google Cloud's leadership are pieces of work. One of the reasons for the acquisition was the amazing support, and they now want to get rid of it. Shame! 🔔🔔🔔  

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2019/09/29/the-department-of-customer-love/

N

https://twitter.com/xglookgler?t=4MDfhwxCoIoy5wiDaxC3Ow&s=09

carrie
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +2

Hi Thomas!

Firstly, thank you for your kind words about our amazing DCL team - can confirm, they’re fantastic people. Your caring about them as humans means a lot :) #LoveLookerLove

Regarding your support concerns: the department has not been shut down completely. We are still committed to supporting our customers, and feel confident we have the resources in place to do so in the best way possible. I would recommend reaching out to your account team, or if you’d prefer, I can share your concern and ask one of our managers from the Support or Account teams to reach out to you. Feel free to shoot me a message with any more details of your concerns to send their way.

Finally, addressing the posts found on Reddit & elsewhere: I do not have additional information, but I am happy to share your inquiry with a Support Manager or Account team manager and ask them to contact you. 

W

I will translate the PR-speak for you.

 

> can confirm, they’re fantastic people

All the just-fired people *were* fantastic people.

 

> the department has not been shut down completely.

The US team is the department with the mass firing but we still employ some support people in the world.

 

> We are still committed to supporting our customers

 

We are committed to cheaper labour and will be moving support to Mexico City and India etc, where wages are cheap so we can help contribute to making GCP profitable.

 

>  I do not have additional information

 

I do not have any information as I wasn’t involved with the firing and so far reddit has more information than me. :)

 

 

 

moebe
Userlevel 4

this is bad news
The Looker support was and is one of the reasons why I "fell in love" with Looker and why I consider myself an absolute Looker supporter.
But lately I have also had the experience of being confronted in chat with people sending me links to the docs non-stop instead of seriously understanding the problem or looking for a solution.
That was not the case "in the past". I only had highly motivated, cool, competent, funny, determined, helpful DCLs in the chat who didn't want to leave until I was satisfied.

Please @google: see this incredible asset as a unique selling point and reason for clients to want to work with Looker and not as a cost factor.

wilg

Just to be clear, yes it is true. You can read more here: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cloud-layoffs-support-teams-looker-2022-3

Dawid
Userlevel 7
Badge +1

I knew the acquisition by Google is not going to mean anything good for Looker. Such sad news : (

Dawid
thomas_brittain
Userlevel 4

:rage:

 

Dawid
Userlevel 7
Badge +1

Oh bloody hell. I would like to see stats. Percentage of queries that could have actually been solved by quoting a link from documentation. Looker documentation is pretty solid, I admit but very often (especially since merging with Google Cloud) my simple question turns out into ~1h conversation with Support and discovering bugs

Dawid
er1k
Userlevel 5
Badge

Best part of Looker is now complete mess. Couple of days ago I had a critical incident where I listed the issue in the start message with fix in mind. 

What happened was stupid 1h long discussion about - which browser version are you using, can you check your internet once more, etc. Until finally reaching to the same conclusion which I listed in the starting message.

Overall it feels like Looker customers are now the ones doing debugging and teaching support about what could be wrong. Most of the agents have no clue and simply go through the list of regular questions.

IanT
Userlevel 7
Badge

Bit harsh but mostly true!

er1k
Userlevel 5
Badge

It would be nice to get Looker’s response to this also. @karisa.eberly is there anyone who would like to comment on support changes/plans from your side? :) 

karisa.eberly
Rank
Userlevel 3
Badge

Hi Everyone, thank you for the responses. I am very sorry to hear about the frustrating and lengthy experiences you are having with trouble-shooting issues. I have shared these with our Support Management. I will follow up with you @Dawid , @IanT, @moebe , @thomas_brittain and @er1k individually on your experiences. 

Regarding an update on the Support changes and plans, I will share one as soon as I have it. My sincere apologies, but I do not have an update beyond what @carrie has shared yet. However, I am working to get the Looker Community one as soon as I can. 

karisa.eberly
Rank
Userlevel 3
Badge

Hi everyone, thank you for your patience in waiting for an update. I do want to highlight that the Looker Support Team is still here to help trouble-shoot the technical issues and questions you may have with Looker. If there are concerns with the support being received, please let us know by reaching out to your Account Manager, or sending me a message with additional context that I can share with Account and/or Support Management. Thank you for your patience, your continued support of Looker and your willingness to provide feedback.

Dawid
Userlevel 7
Badge +1

Can you confirm the question in the subject? Has the whole team been sacked and replaced with a chatbot and another team from a different country with not even half the knowledge of the previous team? 

Dawid
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